World War II veterans honor colleague

BANGOR – Three World War II veterans who graduated from the same high school were pleased to see a photo of an old friend on a recent trip to the Maine Air Museum, 98 Maine Ave. All were students of LaGrange High School, which closed in 1956.

The photo they looked at was of a schoolmate, Capt. Kenneth E. Ingalls, whose B-17 Flying Fortress was shot down over eastern Germany in 1944. Ingalls spent the following year, 1945, as a prisoner of war.

After World War II, Ingalls did some commercial flying and coached high school basketball. He then joined the Maine Air National Guard and made the transition to jet fighters, specifically the F-86 North American Sabre jet. While serving in Germany, he lost his life as a passenger in a military aircraft that crashed in the French Alps in 1954.

The World War II veterans visiting the museum were:

. Earl Bishop Jr., 80, of Enfield, who served as a gunner on B-29 bombers with the 13th Air Force in the South Pacific during World War II.

. Elwood Howard, 85, of Crystal Hill, Wash., who saw combat during World War II and whose P-38 Lockheed Lightning was shot down in France. Howard was wounded and received burns. However, he was rescued, saved and hidden by members of the French Underground. In 1994, the French people who saved him located him in the United States and invited him to France for a 50-year anniversary celebration.

. Marcel Dyer, 83, of Bangor, who was a U.S. Navy pilot during World War II. He was stationed at stateside bases.

Photographer Richard Johnson, 77, of Sebec, a Korean War era veteran of the U.S. Navy and Reserves with service at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, also was a student at LaGrange High School. He is a member of the Maine Aviation Historical Society.

Unable to join the group was Thomas Howard, 85, Elwood’s cousin, of Milo, also a LaGrange alumni. He was a radio technician with the 15th Air Force in Italy during World War II. One of his most interesting flights was as radio operator for Gen. Jimmy Doolittle in a B-17.

Bishop, the Howards, Dyer and Johnson, along with Carolyn Dixon Ingalls Gilbert, widow of Captain Ingalls, attended a LaGrange High School reunion on June 30.

The men came to Bangor to visit the Maine Air Museum on July 1.

The group also visited the Cole Land Transportation Museum in Bangor, where the men and Harwood’s son, Mike, a Vietnam veteran, received Maine-made maple walking sticks for the era in which they served.